Beauty and the Beast
by Annie Dash
Summary: Silena and Charles fic. How they fell in love, Luke and Charles rivalry, and some Clarisse and Chris friendship.
1. Prologue

**I'm not completely certain where this story is going, but please tell me what you think. :)**

Prologue

No one fully understood how close the two were. They spent almost every spare moment together, and since they were both year-rounders at camp, so they saw each other every day for almost eight years straight. They came in the same week, in the same summer, and they were claimed on the same day. It must have been a sign. They met at age six and didn't get around to loving each other until age fourteen.

Their friendship and eventual relationship showed that beauty wasn't always just skin deep, and maybe the goddess of love didn't need an attractive man to survive. A mutual connection of souls was stronger than any physical lust, as the two could relate to each other's troubled home lives, with mortal parents who, despite the fact that they cared about their children, could only love their kids partially, with hearts that were broken from years of misery, no thanks to the gods. Both teenagers chose their immortal kin over the mortal ones.

Percy and Annabeth had nothing on Charlie and Silena. While Wise Girl and Seaweed Brain were off fetching lightning bolts, Beauty and the Beast were taking turns sneaking into each other's cabins, taking archery lessons together (both were horrible, and it caused lots of laughter between the two), and watching movies and cuddling in the TV room in the Big House. Even demigods needed some exposure to the outside world, and the Big House provided all of them with that opportunity.

It was her eyes that first drew him in; his warm and caring nature that made her fall in love. It was the whispers from their siblings that convinced them to take their relationship farther, one step at a time. As much as the two loved each other, sometimes they needed approval from others in order to feel completely confident with their decisions. The smell of his aftershave, the curls of her hair, his warm embrace, and her love for everyone and everything made them fall in love even more.

But she was still a spy, and no one knew, except for Luke. When she was twelve, she looked up to Luke almost as much as Annabeth did, and the boy, who was five years older than her, offered her a job to help overthrow the gods. As much as she cared about Charles, Luke's proposition sounded pretty tempting to her, so she took the scythe charm, hid it wherever she could, and continued lying to Beckendorf about how committed she was to the Olympians, and how much she loved her mother, the heartbreaker who hurt her father. Aphrodite, who simply let her father become an alcoholic and raise her, all drunk and miserable.

The new norm became whispering secrets she heard to Luke whenever she could, so the Titans could find out the camp's strengths and weaknesses and looking into his beautiful ice blue eyes that filled with hatred whenever he thought he might fail in his dreams to defeat the gods. The new norm became using Charlie as a method of getting away from everything, and slowly falling in love with him, but never loving him enough to reveal her status as a spy. The new norm became going on casual double dates with Charlie, Clarisse, and Chris, her little group at camp.

Anyone else would have been happy.

She wanted more.


	2. Some Nights

**I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas are having a wonderful holiday, and I hope anyone who isn't celebrating it had a wonderful day anyways. Here's chapter 1. :)**

**Please review! I appreciate it so much.**

Chapter 1

Sometimes they broke curfew, so Silena could get away from the other Aphrodite kids. Every single one of them was so obsessed with fitting in, looking beautiful, and attractive movie stars. By the time Silena was ten and fairly grown up for a demigod, they expected her to join in, but she simply wasn't interested. The only boy she had ever loved was Charlie, a boy who never met the conventional standards of beauty but whose soul more than made up for it. He'd been raised by a beautiful mother with a broken heart, who taught him to always treat others right, regardless of their past and how they treated him.

He was only five when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, from years of smoking to distract herself from all the pain. He was only six when the cancer began taking over her entire being, and her entire life just became a time bomb. She was going to die eventually, but no one knew when. He was only six when he stayed up until three AM with his grandparents, hoping that maybe his mom would make it through. The sorrow-filled eyes of the doctor said all he needed to know. The night just got weirder when a centaur came to take him to Camp Half-Blood, and his grandparents were all too willing to let him leave. They didn't really want to raise another child, so soon after his mother passed away.

Likewise, Silena was only six when her father decided he was an unfit parent and left her on the steps of the Big House in the middle of the afternoon to indulge in a few beers. It was that very day that she met Chiron and Beckendorf, who had only been there for two days. It was then that she met the boy who she would swear in less than ten years was the only completely perfect hero. She swore up and down that he was the only boy she had ever met who truly knew how to treat a girl right. The boy with the chocolate brown skin was the only one who could make her feel completely loved and whose actions truly measured up to his words. He never lied to her even once, and he never broke a single promise.

Even at age ten, Silena wasn't able to say that she hadn't lied or broken some promises. All she could say was that Charlie never found out. She could also say that she still loved him, despite the fact that she had made some stupid mistakes.

One night, when Silena's siblings were getting particularly difficult, the two agreed to meet outside the sword-fighting arena at camp. The two kids were already particularly close, having known each other for four years, and they were quiet for almost half an hour until Silena spoke up.

"Sometimes I hate them."

"Who?" It was questionable that the word "hate" was even a word Charlie understood, as he showed only compassion to everyone he had ever met. The innocence and curiosity in his eyes after Silena's remark was almost proof.

"Our parents, the divine ones, I mean. They drove both our parents to the edge, and they probably don't even care. They were just little worthless humans the gods had affairs with, and Aphrodite and Hephaestus probably couldn't have cared less about our mortal parents. They never even visited us. They never even cared about us." A single tear fell from her eye, and she looked simply miserable. She had clearly put a lot of thought into the subject, and it had become an emotionally-charged one.

Beckendorf wrapped a comforting arm around her and said, "I don't hate them, but sometimes I wonder how they could ever do that, especially to someone as amazing as my mother. I'm scared that all our lives have become are trying to please our parents, which might not be right. Maybe we should just work on making ourselves and our friends happy, the people who we actually know and can love. Maybe getting into Elysium really doesn't matter."

The two sat together talking for hours, until they decided to sneak back into their cabins. Both of their counselors honestly couldn't have cared less about young kids being missing. Eventually, spending long nights together became routine.

They were safe.

Silena hated it.


End file.
